Do have a hard time making decisions?

Do you find yourself ruminating for days and asking everyone you know their opinions and advice before really sitting with your own feelings about any given situation?

If this is you, you are not alone. So many women in our community have reached out to me asking how they can get off the struggle bus of indecisiveness. Thank you for your openness and for letting me know what you really want to master because I want to help you learn whatever you need so that your life runs more smoothly for you.

That’s why this week and in this VIDEO, I’m covering the reasons why you might be suffering from chronic indecision, your downloaded decision-making blueprint, and some tools you can use to tune into your innate wisdom and feel more confident making decisions.

Why do some people suffer from chronic indecision? It could be that this behavior was modeled for you when you were growing up. It’s possible you come from a long line of indecisive people. If as a child you saw your mother or father labor over every decision, you learned that this is what decision making looks like. I call this collection of information and messages that you received from your family of origin your “downloaded blueprint”.

The good news is that once you become aware of your blueprint, you have the power to re-write it yourself. I created a cheat sheet for you with guided questions to help you uncover your Downloaded Decision-Making Blueprint, so be sure to grab that right here.

What I’ve found from being a psychotherapist for over 20 years is that usually, people who struggle with indecisiveness, when facing a decision, will ask every person they’ve ever known what they think, and talk about it multiple times to multiple people. Then, even once they make a decision, they second guess that they made the “right” one.

Can you relate? Let’s talk about what that experience means. There is insecurity, but there’s also fear. If you grew up in a family system where you were punished, blamed or criticized when you made a “wrong” decision, this could put you in a chronic state of not wanting to deal with making decisions or having a lot of anxiety around it.

If this is the case, you might find yourself procrastinating when it’s time to make a choice or give someone an answer because if you don’t, then whatever the outcome is…it’s not on you, right? So in this way, the avoidance allows you to not have to take responsibility or ownership of a situation.

The thing is…not deciding is a decision too. I want you to ask yourself, what are you potentially missing out on in your life by continuing this pattern?

When we are trying to understand why we behave the way we do, particularly when we are stuck in any negative behavioral pattern, it is essential to do some self-inquiry around the secondary gain.

Secondary gain is the hidden “benefit” (or benefits) you get from staying stuck in your current circumstances. In this case, it’s what you’re getting out of being indecisive. While it can seem counterintuitive to think that you might be getting something out of the pain of being chronically indecisive, I have a tool that I use with my clients to help uncover the source behind any hidden resistance or sneaky self-sabotaging behavior.

In this week’s cheat sheet, I walk you through some guided questions on how to reveal your secondary gain when it comes to indecisiveness. You can download it right here.

It is very common for people who grew up getting negative feedback around decision making to want to continue to avoid being in that situation as adults. It’s like the little kid in you is still getting fearful and triggered when you feel pressured to make a decision.

Sometimes we don’t have the decision-making skillset at all because as children, all the decisions were made for us. In some family systems, parents can continue to impress their opinions onto their adult children…weighing in, disagreeing with their choices, and basically still telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. If this is you, there is a cost to not exercising your right as an adult to your own decisions.

You have a right to your own life and to stand in your own truth, and I promise you, you can learn to set the kind of healthy boundaries that support you in being the whole, confident, decisive human you want to be.

I hope this was helpful to you. If it was, share it with the humans you love and know would benefit from it!

Please be sure to download the guide I created for you here, because it contains carefully curated questions to expand your self-inquiry and my best quick tips and resources to help you begin to cure chronic indecision.

Thank you for watching, for listening, for reading, and for taking your time out of your life to actually care about your own mental health…because when one of us gets healthy, the whole world gets just a little bit healthier than it is right now….and I’m SO on board for that…how about you? 😉

Again, thank you. I hope you have an amazing week and as always, take care of you.

Terri Cole is a licensed psychotherapist, transformation coach, and an expert at turning fear into freedom. Sign up for Terri’s weekly Newsletter, check out her blog and follow her on Twitter.